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Recently, I spent a fair about of time studying a thief that I’m sure we are all familiar with, procrastination. I knew I’d get around to it one day. [Canned laughter... It's a tough crowd.] What I’ve discovered through some serious introspection is it seems to be a topic just about everyone understands. Seems to me whenever the topic is brought up, everyone always nods their head and says, “Ya ya, I know, I know.” But do they really. I think most recognize that procrastination exists, but have a hard time conquering it. Every January people from all over the world make resolutions to change something in their lives. Most of these resolutions fall by the wayside fairly quickly. But people know they should modify their behavior but have a hard time doing it.

When it comes to building businesses online there is a lot to learn. Even if you do have experience, things change quite quickly. You need to be learning constantly. Additionally, you have to become a business specialist. You have to contend with taxes, bookkeeping, affiliates, vendors, advertising, fulfillment, traffic, lead generation, etc. If you are a procrastinator, you’ll be eaten alive. You may as well simply donate your time to some civic group. You at least have something to show for it.

As I mentioned earlier, most people recognize procrastination. They know that they can’t blame others and are responsible for their own actions. They understand that they have to be goal orientated. They understand that even bad action is better than no action and that they need to break bad habits that rob time. But there is one that is a little bit harder to recognize. That is that the time you spend at your computer had better be productive and directly responsible to creating income. That’s the bottom line. Checking your email 15 times a day, perusing over to your Facebook Page, or your Twitter account and following links to who know where and generally, spending time on your computer unproductively is a type of procrastination. There are many ways to rationalize this practice but holding it up to the test of creating income for your business is the litmus test.

There certainly are strategies of using social media, but just make sure you schedule your time for that action. If it is taking more time than you allocated, make sure you are receiving a measurable and tangible benefit.

Now I want to throw a caveat on all of this and it’s that you should concentrate your time on money generating activities and automate or outsource the rest. For some, the money making activity might be networking with people by calling them up. For those who are technically savvy, web creation may be their ticket so to speak. For some it may be copy writing.

So in closing I ask you examine some of the things you may be procrastinating with and try and uncover the root cause, make some resolutions and find ways to combat the thief, and your bank account will love you for it.

Well I’m continuing my series on reducing or stopping the stress in your life. Today, I’m talking about saying, NO. I remember an old movie back in the 70′s called “Silent Movie“. It was made in 1976 by Mel Brooks. It was a silent movie except there was one spoken word in the whole movie by of all people Marcel Marceau. He said “NO!”.

I’m saying this because for some reason we are almost conditioned to always say yes, OK, or ya. After all, you want to go along to get along. You don’t want to appear inferior, do you. So when someone asks you if you can do something, the obvious response is typically, OK. You can always find a way to squeeze it into your schedule somehow, right? Well you may be a superman or superwomen but squeezing too many things into your schedule becomes downright stressful.

You need to learn to say NO. You need to simply say you don’t have the capacity to take on an extra chore. You need to prioritize each of the things you are asked to do, sometimes self imposed as well, and ask yourself if there are more important things to do. So when declining an offer you need to make sure you are firm. If necessary, let the person making the request know that you can’t fit it into your schedule. If you start to feel guilty, offer to do something else or to take on the task later in the week once your week is a little less hectic.

It is plain and simple. Do what’s important for you. Remember, some of the small items you do have, See “Git Er Done – Stopping Stress Your Life“, you should knock off right away. Then by not committing to things that directly benefit you, things should start being less stressful. Tomorrow, I’ll talk about number 3, exercising.